My visit to Maksum (Maksoom)...

This morning I flew along with one of our pilots to a little village called Maksum. It was a neat experience to see up close what they do each day.

Here is Roy checking in the cargo and people. Everything is carefully weighed. See that ripply thing on the bottom end of the wing? That's a new thingamajig that allows our planes to carry 50 kgs more loading! Pretty neat eh?

Here you have pilot Kevin doing his preflight check. Then you have us waiting for our turn to take off. In the take off position in that photo is one of our caravans.

Here we are in the cockpit. It was fun to be able to listen as Kevin communicated with the flight followers, the control tower, other pilots and people in villages under us that really really wanted Mr. Pilot to come to their village as they had people that needed to go places. Never mind that their village was blanketed in clouds or the fact that they have to go through the proper channels to make a flight request... apparently this happens every single day as soon as they hear Kevin is on the radio. Then when Kevin contacted our destination village to ask about the weather and visibility, they also made a sudden flight request to have cargo brought to a different location... not possible... So in the second photo, we are going over the final ridge before approaching the airstrip. This airstrip is a fun one to go into as you need to circle around a mountain first so you make some pretty strong turns... my stomach did okay thankfully...

On our first approach to the runway we saw what you see in the first photo. A naughty cloud just hanging at the beginning of the landing strip obscuring things enough that we aborted our landing, powered up and went around in a nice big circle. While circling, we saw the runway in the second photo very clearly, except that wasn't our destination. It's not even a runway used by MAF. Clouds coming up suddenly is typical in this area of Papua. Winds also tend to come up around mid-morning and so there is a 9:00 wind curfew on this strip.

Then on our second approach things were very clear and we made a lovely landing. A bunch of men including the strip agent immediately came to the plane, helped unload the rice we brought and engaged the pilot in their traditional greeting of grasping another persons pointer-finger knuckle with your two knuckles and squeezing and pulling quickly making a "tock" sound. Kevin grew up here in Papua and so has the local customs and even bits of the local language down. He is the only pilot servicing this strip and the folks love him! There was quite a crowd waiting for us. The day the plane comes is an exciting day!

These two lovely ladies chatted with me and showed me their houses... well the outsides of them. It is totally culturally inappropriate for me to go into their houses as they don't know me at all. In the bottom photo, the one lady is holding her granddaughter. I asked if everyone wears clothes made from cloth or if anyone still wears traditional clothing made from grass. They said that everyone wears clothes. I asked if you could buy clothes anywhere in the village. Nope, they have to go to Sentani, buy the clothes and then bring them back. So I bet that most people were wearing the one and only set of clothing they own... One thing I have learned here is to see women for who they are, not by what they wear.

These kids were quite excited to have their photo taken. There is a school in the village and when I asked if there was always a teacher they said yes... not sure I believe that.

Then it was time to head back home. There's the strip agent standing by while Kevin gets the plane going. We took three passengers back with us. One was a young man going to live in Sentani so that he could go to high school. He was really nervous, especially when we went through some clouds and bounced around in white nothingness... oh, maybe that was me that was scared... just a little... And then you have good old Sentani airport.